Wednesday 12 August 2009

My wounded soldier. A cautionary tale

As those of you on Twitter may remember we recently had an "eventful" evening in our household. Ever generous, Boy Child decided to provide me with yet more blog fodder by wrestling with the dog at 1am and ending up being scalped. The joys of A&E at 1.30am are many and varied I am sure, I am just too surly to appreciate them. For a beautiful piece on this you need to go to http://misswhistle.blogspot.com/2009/07/emergency-room.html


BC had come down from his room on a fridge raid, but stopped off to romp with the lunatic hound, one thing led to another and at 1am BC stumbled back upstairs,

"I'm bleeding". I have to admit my head went under the pillow for a moment, maybe I hadn't heard.

"Mu-um, there's quite a lot of blood" .........................and then the clincher.

"It's dripping on the floor"

By this time Silent One had woken up and gone to investigate. when he found a length of BC's scalp with hair attached (I kid you not) on the floor things became a little more urgent. The dog was beside himself with guilt and was prostrate on the floor, BC was being stoic and Silent One proved his worth by disposing of the evidence.

A&E was not too busy, but the nurse decided his scalp needed to be checked by plastics, so we were sent home with enough bandaging to do a remake of The Mummy and an invitation to return the next morning.

When seen by plastics the decision was made to do clever, gruesome embroidery which I shall tell you nothing about because it makes me feel quite poorly. Not normally squeamish in the slightest, but this was my baby . Then there followed multiple check ups to make sure no brains were escaping (how would they tell ?) and the healing was going well.

After two sets of antibiotics, sutures, clips and glue BC is mended although he will have a Heidleburg quality scar on his brow for the rest of his life. Here's hoping he can think of a story that involves beautiful maidens, swarthy villains and derring do. Being BC it will be a functional recitation of events.......................... if you want embellishment rely on his mother.

10 comments:

Wildernesschic said...

Oh God ! What a nightmare. I guess I have all this to come with my boys. Glad he is ok now. I would be squeamish who ever so my baby... well I cannot imagine x

Red Shoes said...

OMG! Scalp! Uuuugh. Can't imagine how he made it to your room to tell you about it. Didn't it hurt unbearably?

Anonymous said...

That sounds gruesome - but since he's a male, he will downplay it and of course the story will become one of great courage in the face of great tribulation. Hope he heals quickly!

Jean said...

Urghh, sounds awful! I think your Boy Child is more of a Man Child though!

Liberty London Girl said...

OOOOOWWWWWW! LLGxx

Clare said...

OMG !!! what a catastrophe (and brilliant blog fodder) poooooooooor baby xxx

Titian red said...

Thank you all for your comments and kind words. BoyChild is pretty much fully recovered and says the pain from being used in my blog is far greater than that inflicted by the injury. I pointed out to him if he didn't do ridiculous things I would not feel the need to use them in my blog and we reached an impasse. A bag of wine gums served to restore equilibrium and achieve full rights to his life story.

Kitty said...

If he were only dressed in WWI battle clothes, this could be a painting. ;)

I will share my own 'head injury of child' with you. Little one (now 9) was 4 months old, bigger one (now 11) was 2, I was at the Parish Church, helping to sew banners, Vicar's 2 1/2 year old son and my bigger one running around the stone flags and hiding in the pews, entertaining themselves, laughing, as they always did. Suddenly a screeeech sounds out and I see my daughter stand up with a BIRO ink pen sticking out from her head, just above her left eye. Eeek! (She had found it, under a pew and started running with it, yes, I then thought of Harold and the arrow.)
At the Infirmary, they pointed out she would have the ink mark, (can you see it? Just there? Oh cheers, yes...) on her skull forever, but it wouldn't show. Her scar has faded, as Plastics did a good job, but still... sheesh!
I have complete empathy with you!

Titian red said...

Oh my Lord, that is awful. Somehow it always seems so much worse when they are little and perfect. When BC was very young (weeks) managed to cut very tip of his finger off when doing his nails. From them on followed Health Visitors advice and "bit" them off. Does your daughter remember the accident ?

Kitty said...

I just asked her, "Do you remember?" "Of course, Mummy, I was running and trying to catch Gregory because we were playing and I had a pen and I tripped and fell over, and got blood on the stones, and then I got to sit in the front with you, and not in my car seat and you gave me Chunky Monkey ice cream later. I remember everything."
I don't doubt that, she is scary about facts and has a near-perfect recall from about the age of 19 months.
Ah yes, biting the fingernail off, that's a lovely memory jolt, they were such tiny little wisps of nail, almost like tissue paper.